Sandra Bullock Talks 'Gravity,' Career and Personal Life in Vogue: "If it ends here, I've ended up on top" (VIDEO)

In a new profile of Sandra Bullock, Vogue sits down with the actress to discuss her latest film, Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity,” her Oscar win for “The Blind Side,” life as a mother in Austin, Texas and much more. We’ve rounded up highlights below.

There is already a great deal of Oscar talk for Bullock in 2013, who’s having a banner year with the massively successful “The Heat” and her challenging role in “Gravity” (October 4) as an astronaut thrown asunder from her spaceship. George Clooney costars, but Bullock carries most of the film herself and in a performance shot entirely in a 9×9-foot cube surrounded by LED lights.

She talks to Vogue writer Jason Gay about prepping for that film (read our review of “Gravity” here).

“I’m petrified of flying… Plummeting out of the sky was not my idea of how I wanted to work with Alfonso Cuaron. But at one point I said down and said, What is it about this movie that is telling me to get off my ass and get over something that has paralyzed me?”

On getting into character:

Dr. Stone is haunted by a past tragedy, and Bullock wanted her to resemble a person who had “become a shell,” so she underwent a grueling physical-training regimen designed to strip away “almost everything that possibly made her a woman.” A dancer since childhood, Bullock found a pair of Australian dancers who served as her trainers. “They created a way of working out that I could tolerate,” she says. “I don’t want to feel like I’m in a gym.”

On working with Cuaron:

Bullock sees “Gravity” as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. “You check it off and go, ‘if it ends here, I’ve ended up on top,’ ” she says. “There’s nothing else to do.”

Bullock also talked about her Oscar-winning performance in 2009’s “The Blind Side,“ in which she played Leigh Anne Tuohy, a larger-than-life Memphis woman who takes under her wing Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All American football player.

“I turned it down three, four times… I was so worried about it being a Lifetime movie.” Director John Lee Hancock convinced her otherwise, but the first week of shooting was rocky. Bullock admits she struggled to find her rhythm playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, a larger-than-life Memphis powerhouse. “I could not make it work,” Bullock recalls. “I thought, I’m going to get roasted. I’m going to get creamed for this.”

And finally, though tight-lipped, she had a bit to say about her fallout and eventual divorce with actor Jesse James just days after the Oscars:

“We’re all where we’re supposed to be … I am exactly where I want to be now. You can’t go backward. I’m not going backward. I’m grateful that I’m here, blessed to have what I have. Nobody can be prepared for anything. If you end up in a place where you can look back and go, ‘It happened, but I’m so lucky to be sitting where I am sitting…'” Bullock doesn’t complete the thought, but it is clear what she means.

Read the full story here. Also check out Vogue’s accompany video below.